…Over the past year, small new farmhouses have sprouted, looking incongruous among the southern region’s fields of sugar cane and karst mountains — similar to those in Guilin, one of top tourist attractions in China.

High prices for the commodity in past few years had encouraged farmers to plant cane to the utmost. It has helped pad the pockets of farmers in an impoverished region left behind by the country’s economic miracle.

Now, hope runs high in China for Guangxi‘s about 30 million farmers to jump on the biofuel fever. Beijing has begun encouraging ethanol made from non-grain crops, such as cassava — known also as tapioca — the region’s other main crop. [Full Text]